Barbary-Coast Bunny
Barbary-Coast Bunny is a 1956 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. Plot Bugs tunnels cross-country to meet his cousin, only to run head first into a boulder that turns out to be made of pure gold. While Bugs celebrates this stroke of luck, Nasty Canasta sees this and prepares to steal it. Bugs realizes that he will have trouble safeguarding the gold. Canasta sets up a simple stand to claim to be a banker who can safely store Bugs' boulder. The rabbit falls for the ruse. However, when Bugs decides to ask for his gold back, Canasta claims the bank is closing and traps the rabbit in the folded up stand while he rides away with the gold. Furious, Bugs vows revenge claiming "You realize that this is not going to be unchallenged." Six months later, Canasta has used his ill-gotten gains to start a casino in San Francisco Canasta's Gambling H--l" which is shamelessly rigged in the house's favor. As Canasta prepares for his crooked business, Bugs enters the casino in the role, playing a hopelessly naïve country boy who confuses a slot machine for "one of them new-fangled tele-o-phones". When Bugs uses it to phone his mother for some money, unaware that it's not a telephone, he hits the jackpot and is buried in coins to Canasta's shock. Hoping to recoup this loss, Canasta convinces Bugs to stay for a game and thinks he is maneuvering the apparently easy mark into playing a game of roulette on the pretense of it being a game of marbles. To build his would-be victim's confidence, Canasta arranges for Bugs to win on his first spin, but Bugs develops a winning streak on the same number (#23). Having nearly lost everything, Canasta covers #23 with a block of wood and sets the wheel up for the marble to stop on #00, but when it does his subsequent striking the table in triumph causes the ball to bounce and hammer into the knot of the block of wood, thus landing on #23 yet again for Bugs to win. Now desperate to win back Bugs' now massive winnings, Canasta convinces Bugs to try playing draw poker and Bugs secretly builds the villains' confidence when he pretends to think the contest involves literally drawing a picture of a fireplace poker. Bugs then follows up on the pretense by pretending to misinterpret Canasta's description of the importance of having the biggest hand to win means blowing up his glove into a giant balloon, causing Canasta to lose his temper at his would-be victim's obtuseness ("CUT IT OUT, CAN'T YA'??!!!"). Bugs uses this as a pretext to walk out, forcing Canasta to grovel in order to coax Bugs to return to the game. Canasta soon regrets doing that when Bugs, after staking all his money, promptly wins with a Four of a Kind consisting of Aces ("A pair of ones, and another pair of ones"), trumping Canasta's Full House. Now with his casino's bank irreparably broken at the hands of this simpleton who seems physically incapable of losing, Canasta decides to rob Bugs at gunpoint on the pretense of it being another game of chance. Bugs, still keeping in character, naively spins the revolver bullet cylinder like a slot machine and a mass of coins inexplicably pours out the gun's barrel. As Bugs' departs with seemingly all the casino's funds and more, Canasta greedily tries to win money from his gun, only to shoot himself in the attempt, and collapses. Bugs pops in and says, "The moral of this story is, 'Don't try to steal no 18 karats carrots from no rabbit.'" Availability * VHS - Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny * DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Disc 1 * Blu-Ray, DVD - Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2, Disc 2 Goofs * When Bugs turns his head at one point, the right whiskers disappear. In the next scenes, the whiskers are restored. Censorship * The ending where Bugs (dressed as a naive country boy) thinks a gun is a slot machine and wins the rest of the gold (in the form of coins) and Nasty Canasta ends up getting shot after doing the same thing was edited on three channels in three different ways due to gunfire violence (and possible blackface) http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/b/: ** On CBS, the cartoon keeps in Bugs winning the gold from Canasta's gun, cuts out Canasta doing the same and getting shot, and resumes at the part with Bugs' "18 karats" line. ** On The Merrie Melodies Show, the part where Nasty Canasta spins the gun chamber and aims the gun at his face is shown, but the gun blast is replaced with a frozen shot of Bugs's face (from the last part of the cartoon). ** For a time on Cartoon Network and its sister channel Boomerang, the entire ending was replaced with a repeat shot of Nasty Canasta's upset face after Bugs beats him at poker intercut with Bugs carrying his winnings in a wheelbarrow, making it seem as if Canasta got upset over Bugs taking him for everything he had in the poker game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMLxGZrJG88. As of 2011, the original ending has been restored on both Cartoon Network and Boomerang.https://archive.org/details/Jan2018Cartoons *** The original ending, however, was shown in full on Cartoon Network and Boomerang feeds outside the United States. Notes * This is one of few cartoons where Bugs doesn't munch a carrot. * Most of this cartoon was used in the TV Special, How Bugs Bunny Won the West. * This is the only cartoon where Nasty Canasta is paired with Bugs Bunny instead of Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Unlike his previous two appearances, "Drip-Along Daffy" and "My Little Duckaroo", Canasta has been redesigned in this cartoon, giving him a fatter physique and dopier look. This redesign of Canasta would reappear in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries episode "B2 or Not B2" voiced by Jim Cummings. * The background music playing at the scene when Bugs develops a winning streak on the same number (#23) in the spin game is re-used in Cartoon Network's 2001 June Bugs marathon (the same one that became infamous for banning 12 Bugs Bunny cartoons that featured racially insensitive content, despite that some of the alleged racially insensitive Bugs cartoons have aired on Cartoon Network prior to the edict to have them banned in 2001) bumpers which tells some interesting trivia about each Bugs Bunny cartoon shown in the marathon.chomikujdailymotion Gallery Nasty.jpg|Bugs and Canasta tumblr_nj7bw5IPlM1s92nono1_1280.jpg tumblr_n96sh9mhXQ1s92nono1_1280.jpg tumblr_n1gi78AGHh1s92nono1_1280.jpg Barbarycoastbunnyuncensoredscene.png|The ending where Canasta inadvertently blasts himself in the face is often censored on TV External Links *Barbary-Coast Bunny at SuperCartoons.net * Barbary-Coast Bunny at B99.TV * * [https://sfx-resource.fandom.com/wiki/Barbary-Coast_Bunny_(1956) Barbary-Coast Bunny] on the SFX Resource References Category:1956 Category:Cartoons directed by Chuck Jones Category:Bugs Bunny Cartoons Category:Bugs Bunny Chuck Jones Category:Hollywood in Cartoons Category:Shorts Category:Looney Tunes Shorts Category:Cartoons written by Tedd Pierce Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling Category:Cartoons animated by Abe Levitow Category:Cartoons animated by Richard Thompson Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Robert Gribbroek Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Philip DeGuard Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Daws Butler Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn Category:Cartoons with music by Milt Franklyn Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons produced by Eddie Selzer